This specification relates to processing local entity content.
The Internet provides access to a wide variety of resources such as video or audio files, web pages for particular subjects, book articles, or news articles. A search system can identify resources in response to a search query that includes one or more search phrases (i.e., one or more words). The search system ranks the resources based on their relevance to the search query and on measures of quality of the resources and provides search results that link to the identified resources. The search results are typically ordered for viewing according to the rank.
Some search systems can obtain or infer a location of a user device from which a search query was received and include local search results that are responsive to the search query. A local search result is a search result that references a document that describes a local entity. A local entity, in turn, is an entity that has been classified as having local significance to particular location. Local entities are typically physical entities associated with an address or a region, such as a restaurant, a hospital, a landmark, and the like. A search result referencing a document describing a local entity receives a search score “boost” for a query if the location associated with the local entity is near the location of the user device. For example, in response to a search query for “coffee shop,” the search system may provide local search results that reference web pages for coffee shops near the location of the user device. Many users in various geographic regions will likely be satisfied with receiving local results for coffee shops in response to the search query “coffee shop” because it is likely that a user submitting the query “coffee shop” is interested in search results for coffee shops that are local to the user's location.
Some search systems also provide search results based on similarity of the subject matter that the documents describe. In the context of local entities, for example, search engines may provide search results for local entities that are related to each other in some predetermined way. For example, in the context of restaurants, suggestions for other restaurants that offer similar menu items at similar prices may be made in response to a selection of search result that references a first restaurant, or in response to a search of other restaurants related to a first restaurant.